Side Walks -safety or doom?

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Side Walks -safety or doom?

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                       Side Walks -safety or doom?

 
In a Country that is famed to be one of the most disabled friendly in
the world, there seems to be a glaring glitch right in our faces, SIDEWALKS.

     
Yes, I speak right, I said sidewalks- the little strip of concrete that
one walks on next to roads, unfortunately, there seems to be a major problem
that no one has adressed in their construction, entry and exit points. Imagine
yourself in a situation where you dependent on a wheel chair for your physical
movement on the sidewalk, and are often unassisted, and are then confronted
with a sidewalk that has an entrance point but no exit point, causing you to
turn and go back the other way and leaving you at the mercy of fate of to find
another route to the point of where u intend to go. A situation that if
possible, is any worse is when there is no entry point at all, and thus there
is no way for the person in the wheelchair to climb up at all, thus in such a
situation, the person has 3 choices - 1) Abandon the route and try to find
another alternative route, hopefully he will find it, however in some cases, he
might not. 2) Cancel his plans and go back the way he came. This would be
unfair and totally incorrect. 3) For him/her to risk travelling a certain part
of the distance on the road, and this is by far the most dangerous choice of
them all, yet however, this is the most commonly chosen one due to the reason
of convienience.

     
What do we do when we find ourselves in this mess? When we find that the
major part of the infrastructure of the road side pavements does not support
entry or exit points for people in wheelchairs to get on the pavements! This I
feel is absolutely shocking and unsettling, and the very fact that this hasn't
been corrected so far shows the gross neglect towards the comfort, safety and
security of this minority. Several other people are also affected by this such
as cyclists, mothers with strollers, etc.

     
Hopefully this will cause some people to sit up and take notice and the
appropriate action will be taken. In my humble opinion, though I know many of
you might disagree with me, the only truly correct solution to the problem is
as always to fix the source of the problem, that in this case would be to
correct the pavements themselves, perhaps remodel them, perhaps reconstruct
them, but I strongly do feel that something has to be done.

I have attached the pictues supporting
what I am trying to show, hopefully this will result in some positive moves
being made.

As Itzhak Perlman rightly said,

"This machine, the wheelchair, I
can go all over the place, but you need a place without stairs to get in."